Disturbance Likely Leads to Shooting on Indy’s North Side

INDIANAPOLIS — IMPD homicide detectives are investigating the killing of a man whose body was sprawled on the pavement outside the driver’s side door of his car in the 1700 block of Shawnee Road Sunday morning.

A neighbor told FOX59/CBS4 what happened at about 11:12 a.m.

”I heard about 15 semi-automatic gunshots. It almost sounded like an AK to me,” said the neighbor. ”I heard ‘em all in one volley.”

The 911 Dispatch Center lit up with a call from the scene and police traffic.

“Male says there is a male in his front yard shot multiple times.”

“There’s a very loud disturbance in the background. There’s a female screaming, ‘Go get my gun!’”

“I have the person that shot them. The male’s in the yard, not awake, not breathing, and the female is telling that she is gonna call people.”

“Dispatch, can you tell them to put their guns up because we’re gonna be there shortly?” asked a responding officer.

“Reference the person shot…I can’t get anybody to answer questions. They’re just screaming.”

The victim’s car was parked on the street in front of the house, pointed in the wrong direction, as if he had arrived in a hurry and was shot attempting to exit his vehicle.

The shooter apparently fled in a vehicle but was taken into custody during a traffic stop a short distance away. IMPD said officers apprehended 22-year-old Antonio McLendon Jr., who was arrested on a preliminary charge of murder.

”Northwest District officers were later able to locate that individual a few miles away from here or a mile away from here at another location,” said IMPD Public Information Officer Tommy Thompson. ”Detectives and officers have recovered a firearm.”

A source indicates that the genesis of the killing may be the result of some domestic discord.

An hour before the shooting, a man at the Shawnee Road location reported to IMPD that he was the victim of a threat communicated by a black male described as 5’6”, 190 pounds.

Saturday at 5 p.m., Sunday morning’s threat victim reported he had been involved in a fight with the same man at the Indy Island Aquatic Center at 8575 East Raymond Street.

Nearly five hours after the fight, the threat victim and a woman at the aquatic center reported her car had been vandalized.

It was the same car the woman was driving during a fatal accident last September, not far from the Shawnee Road address.

”We do know that there have been incidents,” said Thompson. “These two individuals are known to each other and possibly that there has been some ongoing incidents between the two or the two families.”

The man who filed the threat report and the woman whose car had been vandalized had been involved in past domestic altercations with each other and the man was listed as a suspect in a 2022 shooting at the home on Shawnee Road.

“We believe that some type of disturbance led to this incident, where now we have a life that’s lost and a life that may be forever changed,” said Thompson.

”I grew up on the near east side, where this stuff was pretty common but not up here in this neighborhood,” said the neighbor. ”These kids gotta quit using these guns to solve problems. There’s nothing in this world that deserves what happened to that young man down there. Nothing.”